Like any other studio, it’s got to start somewhere, and of course DreamWorks Pictures, the Baby of Steven Spielberg and moguls David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg decided to set off on their own. I guess they wanted to start with something fairly ordinary, standard, and respectful, and appealing to American audiences. Their first ever release, The Peacemaker, accomplishes the second, overdoes it in the first and fourth (except the ultra-conservatives who have to have their healthy dose of patriotic rah-rah), and completely botches the third. Had this film starred Steven Seagal and either a washed up B-movie actress (say Zehra Leverman or even Shannon Tweed) or a naïve up-and-comer, this flick could’ve been easily written off as a half-baked, half-assed, B-movie action thriller. But since there were two big names on the credits, expectations and budgets are of course raised, and disappointments will be more glaring, especially since both big names can’t save this flick from being a big budget, half-baked, half-assed, B-movie action thriller.

Let’s see, Serbo-Bosnian war is in full swing while in Russia, the last steps are being taken to disarm the remaining nuclear weapons in the country. A train full of 10 warheads is on its way to the dismantlers when terrorists seize it, steal 9 warheads and leave one to detonate to make it look like an accident. Enter whiz-chic Nicole Kidman sporting the worst American accent of her career, who’s a top government nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly thinks it wasn’t an accident and that it was probably a deliberate motive since the satellite photos show a time interval between the accident and explosion. Enter smug smart-ass and badass George Clooney as Special Ops Col. Thomas Devoe, who immediately points out that it was a deliberate act made to cover the tracks of some rogue Russian military fucko that elaborated the plan to steal the nukes in order to take them to Iran. Stop for a second.

It’s in this point that you realize that this movie wants to sell you that it’s intelligent via its two main characters as they “chew” on the data of the disaster zone. It really isn’t, mainly because you don’t have to be a 5 year old suffering from autism to realize that the film just simply used its characters to put the two and two together and pretend to have actually required any intelligence to do that. Devoe, ever the all-American soldier figures out the entire terrorist plot in a matter of minutes, while Dr. Kelly tries to brainstorm some insight with Devoe regarding the motivating factors of the terrorists and their stolen nuclear payload, an exercise to which Devoe quickly simplifies for all of us in the audience, “We are the good guys, we chase the bad guys, and they don’t wear black hats.” Oh no, they wear red berets, sport AK-47s, are blonde and muscular, speak a foreign language, and come from a country that we were taught to hate with a passion since the 50’s. The Cold War maybe over but we still have to hate those Russkies, especially those that sell themselves for money.

Anyways, they go to Europe to try and find out where is their destination, and shit starts to happen: With the aide of Devoe’s Russian contact Vertikoff (Armin Muehler-Stall), both he and Dr. Kelly manage to nail the guy who arranged the transportation for the Russian baddie Kodoroff and his nuclear payload. As they get the info, Vertikoff goes vertical and down in the most emotionally manipulative of ways in order to make you care for him, despite the fact that we know next to nil about this guy other than he has a daughter. Devoe and Dr. Kelly (sporting a mini-skirt as usual) of course escape, but not before laying waste at the bad guys whose boss got roughed up by Devoe and who killed Devoe’s Russkie friend. During the fracas, Dr. Kelly loses the key evidence to the required car explosion during the chase sequence… only for us to later find out that she actually e-mailed the documents beforehand to her e-mail address. Gee, NICE GOING KELLY! Otherwise we wouldn’t have a fucking movie! Hey, can I ask then why so hysterical about “not losing the documents” to the car explosion if you already had them fucking e-mailed? Good grief.

Anyways, they soon figure out that the bad guy is not Kodoroff, since the guy is a delivery boy, but rather is some Government Serb called Dusan (Marcel Iures) who paid top dollar to Kodoroff to deliver one nuke to him so he can go and claim his personal vengeance upon The US. This is the point where the film goes from annoyingly dumb to ridiculously bad.

First of all, the supposed satellite images of the Truck near the Azerbaijan/Iran border, they’re absolutely pathetic. It’s clear here that the filmmakers ran out of budget while doing their first satellite prints of the train wreck; apparently they forgot to put the necessary budget to produce the other satellite footage for the “truck in the border” sequence. Either that or there was an error in the screenplay dialogue since the characters seem to mistake a conveniently placed set of roadside cameras and still refer to that system as a satellite. If it’s the latter, then this is just truly an amateurish mistake beyond belief.

Second of all, and as expected, the Russians are utter morons and aren’t trustworthy to handle things themselves; though this is a given in Hollywood no matter if its Russia or the USSR, the Russian people really wish their government were this incompetent. Oh, and they hate us Americans, even though the Cold War is over; witness the All-conquering American forces headed by Devoe who are threatened by the Russian SAM site. Devoe tells them to stand down because they’re chasing the Truck where the Russian baddie is, yet the commander still orders them to fire and brings one of the helicopters down. Just as that tension piece is pulled, it simply disappears as the American forces carry on, go after the truck, get the nukes, and Devoe goes the obligatory mano a mano against Kordoroff as their truck dangles dangerously of course over the bridge. And they come back without being threatened by the SAM guy again. Hello? Did they just simply evaporate?

Third of all, after some half-assed attempt at tension between the two leads before and after the truck raid on morality and rules of engagement, they finally pursue the main bad guy Dusan to New York. They got his ass on the sniper-scope ready to cap his ass, but the sniper can’t do it because of course, “there’s a kid in the line of fire”, and then they go and continue to pursue Dusan all over the streets of New York and into a nearby church. All of this is just pointless tension mechanics as soon as you realize that the main baddie is a complete dullard. He can detonate that fucking nuke ANY GOD DAMN TIME and still inflict a major amount of damage, but NOOOO, because according to Dr. Kelly, he wants to do it in someplace meaningful, and where can it be more meaningful than a church? PUH-FUCKING-LEEZE!!!

Director Mimi Leder (whom I bashed in Deep Impact) is completely clueless how to make an action film. She simply takes the Book of Action Movie Clichés and runs with it. Kind of the same thing Kathryn Bigelow does, except that Kathryn at least TRIES to do something with it, like put some flair and excitement in an action scene, whereas Mimi simply plods the camera around (the car chase scene stands out as one of the most boring car chase scenes ever). Now, cliché-ridden as it might be, it wouldn’t have been a problem had the material had some substance, but there isn’t any here. In fact, Michael Schiffer simply created a by-the-numbers plot full of caricatures instead of characters. Watching Devoe and Dr. Kelly argue or debate a plot point in the movie is like watching two drones blabbering during an infomercial. I mean, shit, you could take the name Devoe, and replace it with GI Fucking Joe and it wouldn’t make a difference. The most pathetic thing about the whole screenplay however is the fact that the main baddie, Dusan is the closest thing to a fully developed character in the movie; he has a background, a story (a tragic one of course) and you can relate to his sufferings, to the point of almost caring for him and for what he believes (until his arrival in New York and the disaster that happens after that). Isn’t that amazing, the guy we root for ultimately is the bad guy, and we’re supposed to be rooting Mr. And Mrs. Action Oriented/Politically Correct Cardboard Cutouts. Good lord, take me home, will ya?

After watching this movie, you have to admit it’s pretty amazing that George Clooney managed to have a career after doing this turd, AND Batman and Robin. And he can consider himself lucky because it’s clear he mails it in here. He brings nothing emotionally to the character; all Clooney does is simply stare, smirk, smile and bust a couple of caps up people’s asses and act like the brainiest and toughest motherfucker in town. To be fair to George though, there wasn’t anything to work with at all in the first place. Nicole Kidman is absolutely lifeless as Dr. Kelly, but then again, her character is also completely one-dimensional, and she dresses up sexy for absolutely no purpose at all except to be yet another sad case of underused eye-candy. The title “dumb-ass bimbo” is more suiting here than the one that says “brainy scientist”. Props to Marcel Iures however, as he manages to flesh out his character out very well and makes for a very sympathetic villain; credit where credit is due. I hope he can find better roles in better movies than this one.

But here’s the big fucker about this movie. Before watching it, I saw the trailer a while back while preparing to watch another film, and the trailer had exactly all the major sequences in the movie, and all in chronological order, and all in less than 3 minutes. So here’s my advice to you: Instead of wasting 124 minutes of your time watching this vapid, stupid, shit-ass, pretentious and completely pedestrian excuse of a movie, watch the trailer instead. Trust me, you’ll burn a lot less brain cells by doing so. 0.5-5